Slapstick

The physical slap stick remains a key component of the plot in the traditional and popular Punch and Judy puppet show.

The name "slapstick" originates from the Italian batacchio or bataccio—called the "slap stick" in English—a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in commedia dell'arte.

[7] British comedians who honed their skills at pantomime and music hall sketches include Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel, George Formby and Dan Leno.

"[12] Building on its later popularity in the 19th and early 20th-century ethnic routines of the American vaudeville house, the style was explored extensively during the "golden era" of black and white movies directed by Hal Roach and Mack Sennett that featured such notables as Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, and Larry Semon.

[14] Slapstick also became a common element in animated cartoons starting in the 1930s and 1940s; examples include Disney's Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck shorts, Walter Lantz's Woody Woodpecker, the Beary Family, MGM's Tom and Jerry, the unrelated Tom and Jerry cartoons of Van Beuren Studios, Warner Bros. Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies, MGM's Barney Bear, and Tex Avery's Screwy Squirrel.

Girls used a stick ripped with feathers to tickle the faces of young men, and they retaliated vigorously with the slapstick.An editorial in the Asbury Park Press, New Jersey, said in 1914:[16] Slapsticks are the latest "fun-making" fad for masque fetes ... Orders to stop the slapstick nuisance should be issued by the police and the Asbury Park carnival commissioners.